I recently tackled a daily project during the month of February. In that I have a full-time job where I commute from New Orleans to Baton Rouge every day and recently started teaching an evening class at a university in the evenings, it was a crazy undertaking, but for over a year I’ve been trying to be more active in the “artist” title I attribute to myself. I feel if you don’t produce art, how can you call yourself an artist?

So, I decided to use an idea for a project I had researched several months back. The original idea for the project was to gain a new skill set, namely learning ZBrush (a digital sculpting software) and getting into 3D sculpting and hair, but since it popped back into my mind of February 1st, I decided to take on the project with my current skill set. A quick explanation of the project is that I took each letter of the alphabet and found a “black hairstyle” that corresponded with it, then created a representation of the hairstyle on the letter. I called it the “Black Hair Alphabet” and chose February because of Black History Month.

When I initially started the project, I was doing a “good job” of working on each letter when I came home from work or class. Each letter typically took 2-4 hours to complete, so that had me going to sleep anywhere between 10:00 pm and midnight. Not good when you get up at 5:30 am every day, but anything to be an artist, right? I posted my letter as soon as I was done with it on my Instagram account and Facebook artist page. In that this was a big project, having these “little wins” helped motivate me toward my goal: being an artist.

I am currently trying to learn Blender 3D. This will be the 4th 3D program added to my arsenal behind Autodesk Maya, Softimage XSI and Cinema 4D. This program is very important for me to learn because it is an open-source program. Open-source means many things, but one of the most important things that it means, for my use, is that it's free. In that I'm trying to teach people animation around New Orleans and Louisiana, it will allow my outreach to stretch farther when I can teach a program that people can download on their computers at no cost to them. A lot of 3D programs can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars which is a barrier to entry.

I really liked one of my students' designs for her chess set, so I decided to finish modeling the pieces in 3D. Here's my WIP.